drawer slide storage

-- 3 --

This relates to an old thread about hardware management systems.The question was what to do with those really heavy boxes of drawer slides that get delivered randomly to your shop. They take a lot of space and are hard to store. Moreover it is very tempting to open them when you just need a slide rather than try to figure out where your existing inventory is.

If you don't have a protocol for tracking slides you never really know how many you have in the building. This leads to either not having enough slides when you need them or having too many dollars living on the shelf. The really stupid part is it can also make you spend $8 looking for an $8 slide.

To fix this problem we created a chest that is designed to hold unopened boxes of drawer slides. Depending on the type of slide it will hold a dozen or more cases.

If you look closely at the rollout you will see that the front edge of every rollout is scalloped so you can easily pluck the first box out.

Right next to this chest we have a large drawer bank that holds all-things-loose drawerslides. These drawers are 4 feet wide and roll out on Accuride 9301 monster slides. We have one drawer for random slide related gizmos and one each for blumotion, accuride 3834 and accuride 4034.

The protocol is that DO NOT OPEN a full case until the loose-slide drawer is 100% empty. This keeps us from having to keep track of how many slides are in half-full boxes and it also cured the problem of slides laying around getting all F/U with sawdust.

Something to bear in mind is that the cost of materials is not simply what you write a check to the vendor for. The cost of materials is all the money you spend getting the hardware from the vendor all the way into the cabinet.

Material costs includes the non-value-added labor costs of staring at a catalog trying to figure out what they call it "this" time.

Material costs include the minutes you spend walking across the shop or opening a drawer and staring at the drawer.

Material costs includes the (harder to quantify) re-scheduling opportunity costs when you need to shift to Plan-B because of a material shortage.

A minute spent on an easter egg hunt costs exactly the same amount of dollars as a minute spent on production. A minute is a minute no matter what you spend doing.

This post cost me $15.
I should be able to also include a political rant.

You've hit on quite the intellectual dilemma.
How do you reconcile what must be thousands of dollars you've spent writing about the advantages of lean manufacturing when the act of writing itself is a very un-lean activity? Imagine how many more shop improvements you could have made with the time you've spent enlightening all of us.

The act of writing is itself cathartic. It helps me to focus my thoughts. There is a recreational element to it as well. If all I did was build cabinets boredom would make my day last forever.

Many years ago I created a thread on this forum about what constitutes yellow flags for contingency planning in cabinet shops. I was discussing a book I read (by William Lasher) who wrote about the entrepreneur for whom problems do not exist and for whom everything is an opportunity. A fellow named Ron Magnano weighed in on that thread and completely changed my business model. I wouldn't have had the benefit of his input without creating the initial thread.

Another time I launched a more mundane thread similar to this one about drawer slide storage. That thread was about sequencing issues and techniques for mounting drawer faces to drawer boxes.
As a result of that thread a blind man can accurately mount the drawer face to a drawer box prior to ever even building the cabinet. I would say that knowledge was recompense enough for all my time spent pontificating.

Ten years ago there was a lot of discourse on this forum about the relative merits of LeanThinking vs Theory of Constraints. A man named Keith Hill had a lot to offer on that topic and shaped my thinking about how you could use one to affect the other.

Ironically it was a guy with the same initials as you that actually opened my eyes up to what lean was all about. I can remember thinking about something he said when the light bulb went off while I was driving to work. Based on his input I had the epiphany that Mrs. Smith was merely the client for what I was working on. The customer for the wide belt sander was actually the Altendorf table saw.

A lot of people pound on me about my writing. Many of them whine a lot about whether or not I am worth reading but I figure there had to be some modicum of curiosity for them to even show up and complain. I'm like Sean Hannity. If you see Cabmaker in the title you already know what I'm gonna talk about.

Thanks for your post cabmaker. I thoroughly enjoy tuning in to wood web's recent post or digging through archived posts; searching for posts just like this. My small shop is always making little improvements. It's shocking for me to see how far we've come with regards to shop improvements and cleanliness. We're SO much more efficient. How? By always trying to improve -- so thank you for sharing. This serves not necessarily a cheat sheet but inspiration to modify to suit my personal tastes, or even apply certain principals found in this post to be applied elsewhere.

I think it would be great if articles like this somehow had a way of recycling to the top again. A lot of posts don't get noticed when they are fresh and don't come back into mind until someone updates them. These pics were some I thought about posting some time ago but forgot all about until another guy responded last week to an original thread from last July.

It's been a long time since I was a carpenter but I always read the helpful hints section that Fine Homebuilding pushes to me in email. Sometimes I see ideas there I tell my DIY customers about. I wish I would have known about the rubber band trick for pulling excess paint off a brush.

SHOP IMPROVEMENTS should probably have their own forum. It's a topic that sits somewhere between BUSINESS & CABINETMAKING. There is, however, a forum on SHOP-BUILT-EQUIPMENT that I don't pay enough attention to. I have a few pieces I should probably post there that would help others.

One of them is a notching machine for the back of drawer boxes when you use undermount slides. This one cost $200 to make and I would guess is as bulletproof and fast as anything on the market. It sure gets the job done. Another guy on this forum sent me a picture of an Altendorf blade guard that has completely change our way of life at my shop.

All of this comes from a culture of continuous improvement.

I feel a blog coming on but my coffee is still warm and I haven't read Breitbart yet.

I am going to get back to this topic of lean in a minute. I hope to coax some input from David about something I think he authored last summer.

But first an important message from our sponsors: Chordal's Letters.

I think DS (and other's) criticism of too much diatribe is easy to understand. I think, however, it is very similar to the missives Chordal used to write about in the 1880s and what Paul Downs and others wrote about in the NYT "You the Boss". I always used to look forward to that part of the newspaper, particularly the comments.

I am a voracious reader. It was because of posts like I make on Woodweb that I ended up having periodic discussions with Chordal's grand daughter several times removed. She is the family historian and is always on the look out for more mortar to put into those bricks. I was able to contribute some to her family lore that she was not aware of and she was very generous with information about the man I had never known.

Chordal (James W. See) was writing about topics like you see on the Woodweb back in the 1870's. He has a lot of input that would be germane to a recent post about 'Starting Times'. He discusses a brand new invention called a time clock. He also opines on the relative merits of clear wax candles vs tallow during a time period that we had not yet figured out how to light the factory.

What is amazing about these letters is how little has changed in 150 years. What is particularly important is his contention about how much prosperity is available to "The Smart Mechanic".

Everything he wrote back then rings true today.

I am going to take a guess that Henry Ford was familiar with Chordal's writings. I know that Taichi Ohno credits Henry Ford for a lot of his thinking.

I love these kinds of posts. As for writing being a waste of time, I'd say not so. I carried a ton of problems with me for 20 plus years and didn't solve many of them until I started writing about them. Writing something that you expect intelligent people to read forces you to think carefully about the problem. And then the comments you get back are incredibly valuable. I applaud Tim for his enormous contribution to this forum - even the political stuff. Without new content, it wouldn't be so interesting. Tim seems to start half the threads. Agree with him or not, he's doing his part.

I'm sorry that I haven't had time lately to contribute as often. Trying to run the business, etc. etc.

Contrary to what you may think, I am not against Lean. But I do worry that the volume of dialogue about Lean on this forum might give people the impression that there is consensus that Lean is the only method for improving one's company. Not only is it not the only method, it's not even the first step.

As you know, I am an advocate for the Theory of Constraints. There was a terrific dialogue years ago on this forum where we discussed how Lean could be used as a tool that could be implemented after, and only after, the tools provided by the Theory of Constraints told you what needed to be improved. But many years have passed and that dialogue is long forgotten.

The Showtime TV series "Ray Donovan" is about a guy who solves rich people's problems in Hollywood. He never knows from one minute to the next what problems will arise, but he always takes the call and usually takes the job. It’d be hard to quantify the value of someone like Ray’s services for two reasons: 1) there aren’t that many guys like Ray, and 2) his value is that he makes it possible for his clients to continue doing what they do, which is to make money. Lots of money. Suffice it to say, Ray does not get paid by the hour.

I happen to be a cabinetmaker that services the ultra high-end residential market. I have come to realize over the years that due to the market I service my business has more in common with Ray Donovan than with Toyota. The value of my product is not determined by materials + labor + overheard + profit. The value of my product is determined by my value to the contractor. I’ve been in this trade a long time and have amassed a lot of knowledge about my particular niche. I happen to feel that if I were to value my product using the standard model of cost-plus, I would be selling myself short.

Lean manufacturing is a hunt for nickels and dimes. If you make your money from efficiently building cabinetry, then Lean manufacturing is probably a worthwhile endeavor. But I don’t make my money by efficiently building cabinetry. I make my money because I am part of a solution that allows the contractor to make money.

What does that mean? First and foremost it means we provide a product of uncompromising quality. We provide it on time, every time, without exception. We provide it in whatever volume they need, whether we are overbooked or not; we can never say no when they need us. It means we provide them with whatever they want, whether we are experts at it or not. And it means we must be able to do this despite the rash of obstacles that are constantly placed in our way; specs that change, schedules that change, team member’s that change, and on and on and on. I wish the system that allowed us to work in that environment was shiny and pretty, but more often it is ugly and inefficient. And I charge accordingly.

I’ve just described my business. According to one article there are over 10,000 cabinet shops in the United States, no doubt each with their own way of doing business. What way is the best way? How is one supposed to know?

I am not opposed to Lean, but jumping straight to Lean is like putting the cart before the horse. Nothing describes this better than the tenet of TOC that basically states that any minute you spend trying to improve something that is not your constraint only further exacerbates your problem. It is a false improvement. Lean is a shotgun approach to continuous improvement that I believe if wielded carelessly leads to no improvement at all, and may in fact be detrimental. It is actually possible that spending time improving your drawer slide storage cabinet actually harmed your company. Unlikely I agree, but possible. But how can you know for sure? TOC gives you the tools to know.

I wish Bob Buckley were still active here, he would have articulated this so much better than I can.

TOC suggests there is one and only one constraint that keeps work from flowing. Logically therefore any energy not directly applied to elevating that constraint produces phantom gains.

Following that logic there is only one traffic jamb on Interstate 5 at any given time. The truth of the matter, however, is that there are a lot of local traffic jambs.

TOC and Lean are not the antithesis of each other.

Theory of Constraints owes it's genesis to an Israeli physicist named Eli Goldratt. Mr. Goldratt's contribution was a novel called "The GOAL" whereby a protagonist named Herbie was gumming up the works and Corporate was going to shut down the factory if they couldn't figure out how to kill Herbie. This was a mathematical abstraction. Mr. Goldratt never actually manufactured anything.

The Toyoda family had a similar mandate. While Herbie was trying to reach the campsite by dark Toyota figured they had exactly 36 months to get a toehold in the automotive industry. Their reasoning was that America would be more focused on building refrigerators and washing machines once the war was over. Have you ever noticed how you never see any notable 1948-1949 automobiles? It wasn't until we had our domestic needs taken care of that we started seeing cars with really cool fins on the bumper and chrome for chrome's sake.

The difference in my opinion was that Goldratt had an opinion whereas Taichi Ohno actually built something.

The logic of TOC, however, cannot be refuted. A more interesting take on it might be what Mark Woeppel had to say in 'Manufacturer's Guide to Theory of Constraints'. In that book he postulate that TOC exists but that you could as a policy matter decide where you wanted that constraint to be in your organization.

Being in control of where the constraint is a whole lot different than Herbie wandering around the forest searching for it.

The purpose of lean is not cost reduction. Cost reduction is merely a tertiary benefit. The purpose of lean is to increase capacity. If you increase capacity you don't have constraints.

Cost is, however, going to become an important consideration again. The contractor may pick you today because of your ability to anticipate and cater to his every need but in the future it's going to come back down to price. Right now he is so busy he only cares about service. As soon as the economy slows down he is only going to care about price.

Lets talk about the economy:

I had three new jobs come into my shop in the last couple of days. I think we have plenty of work. I am ready to hire another person.

The flip side of this is Zillow.
I don't believe for a second the valuation Zillow puts on my house in downtown Seattle. I do, however, believe that the algorithm they use to create those values is relatively consistent.

I can't say for sure what is causing this change in the valuation of Seattle real estate. It might have something to do with Amazon deciding to locate corporate headquarters elsewhere or it might have something to do with Republican tax reform.

It's not hard to predict how this will affect cabinet shops if this trend continues. Eventually the headlines in the newspaper will include the words real estate bubble. When people think houses are going down in value they tend to buy less of them.

When the real estate market slows down your contractor will still want great service but he will also want it at a lower cost.

You said “Following that logic there is only one traffic jamb on Interstate 5 at any given time. The truth of the matter, however, is that there are a lot of local traffic jambs.”

You’re confusing local bottlenecks with the global constraint. There can be many bottlenecks but only 1 true constraint. Just like there can only be 1 weakest link in a chain. Bottlenecks are dealt with by using buffers. That is all part of the system, but we don’t need to get into that. I don’t bother with any of that anyway.

I agree with your suggestions in the past that I could benefit from empowering my workers towards implementing Lean while I keep my eye on the bigger picture. The concern I have is for the smaller shop where the owner does not have the luxury of passing off this task to a crew member. Where is the time of the owner of a 2 man shop best spent? Probably not process improvement if he’s struggling to find enough sales. That’s just a simple example.

I agree with your comment “TOC and Lean are not the antithesis of each other”. I hope I didn’t infer that they were.

You stated “The difference in my opinion was that Goldratt had an opinion whereas Taichi Ohno actually built something.”

That may be true, but there are many companies that have put Goldratt's theory into practice with huge success, including me. It is no longer theory. I also have a hard time believing that the best system for Toyota is also the best system for the small cabinet shop.

You stated “A more interesting take on it might be what Mark Woeppel had to say in 'Manufacturer's Guide to Theory of Constraints'. In that book he postulate that TOC exists but that you could as a policy matter decide where you wanted that constraint to be in your organization. Being in control of where the constraint is a whole lot different than Herbie wandering around the forest searching for it.”

This is absolutely true. This occurs when you are no longer looking to break your constraint and instead use the constraint to set the TAKT time (production level) of your company. This can be temporary or long term.

You stated, “Cost is, however, going to become an important consideration again. The contractor may pick you today because of your ability to anticipate and cater to his every need but in the future it's going to come back down to price. Right now he is so busy he only cares about service. As soon as the economy slows down he is only going to care about price.”

I agree, and I do think about this a lot. I reserve the right to pivot when the time comes. Bear in mind however that cost containment is limited by zero, whereas throughput is limited by infinity. Furthermore, the lower your costs get the more diminished your return on investment becomes towards that activity, sort of like trying to score in the red zone. Whereas the more throughput you can achieve generally increases your return on your investment exponentially due to it's relationship to overhead (throughput generally increases at a greater rate than overhead the bigger you become).

You probably wouldn’t have assumed this from reading my previous post, but I have not increased my prices since 2006. Nor do I suspect we are any more efficient at any particular woodworking process. What we have improved however is the flow of information. This improved flow of information has allowed us to produce 4 times as much volume as in 2006 with not much more overhead. My anecdotal evidence tells me that our ability to provide the service we provide at the same price or less than almost every other shop in our segment is our biggest advantage. I think that will translate well to the next recession.

I skipped the long diatribes. Heres one that I figured out about 8 years ago about inventory
1. The more you have in stock, the less likely your are to have what you need in stock. I think thats a toyota one but not sure.
2. Just about everything I sell or use in my business is in stock somewhere and an order placed by noon today will be in my shop 24 hours later. We keep small buffers of items and use a Kanban type card for all inventory items. It includes reorder points, part number who to buy from and how much to order. I let Hafele and Charles McMurray stock it in large quantities and pull from them as needed, 1-3 times per week.
One issue we have with inventory is we have an order come in that needs 2 of xxx, and we check and go great we have 5 in stock, then a couple days later we have another order that has 4 of xxx and we check again and go great we have 5 in stock and then repeat it again. We think we have enough but forgot about the other orders and are now short. Now we pull and bag items from inventory so that we don't overestimate our stock on hand.
The most important thing is to train your people or yourself to be disciplened to follow the process and not cut cornwrs when your in a hurry or behind.

We have gotten to the point of what Derrick was saying, it was not until we started pulling and marking per job that the old stuff was leaving, but not causing problems we are receiving materials daily and place the job name in the PO line and prep it with the job.

I think what is best is having enough stock on hand to handle the walk in's or rush jobs, but making sure you have enough for the Doctors office with 270 slides then you had better buy them in separate boxes with the cabinet member separated from the drawer member for that job

I finally bought a semi- trailer to get the overload of product out from under our feet in the casework shop and now getting ready to do the same with remnants with the stone shop - mobile a-frames, take pictures, sizes and catalog them the other day I sold several jobs from remnants and had to order the sink bowls in. We checked for damage immediately, so we didn't have an on the job oops.

There is a lot that goes into running the shop and cutting the crap, but my head really felt like it was screwed on when I tested the ERP software with a Doctors Office package that was a BOM that hit the calendar for cnc cutting, dowelling, edgebanding, assembly, install, inventory and cash flow forecast My eyes opened wide Why in the hell am I doing this ? Oh yeah, profits ok

I was just talking to a project manager on a job with 8k worth of change order on corian material and we have to be out of there in 2 weeks- ok, why in the hell are we two weeks away with this deadline looming, and A- don't have all the change orders signed and costs associated documented and B- where in the hell is the missing shop drawings that you still have not reviewed with the architect from 6 months ago- "well the client and architect....." "Oh, I am sorry, but since you sat on this shit so long an impact of 18 hours of production overtime has hit us, because you took to damned long to release the info, so either lax your schedule or approve the OT for the calendar schedule"

Oh, that's right, this is about the profit, but not forgetting their is a human side to all this, but proper storage of materials and due diligence to improve constantly, is the answer

You asked, "What is easier to attain? $500K production with 20% profit or $1million production with 10% profit?"

I wouldn't use the term "easier", nothing in this business is easy. "Likelier" would be more appropriate.

Not only is it likelier that sales of $1 million would net a 10% profit margin vs. sales of $500k netting 20%, but I feel it's likelier that sales of $1 million would net 20% margins before sales of 500k would net 20% margins. In this industry in this day and age it requires a certain capital investment in machinery and square footage to be able to do the quality of work that people expect at the speed that they expect it. 500k is less than 2 months work for us, I find it hard to believe I'd make any money if I had to spread it out over a year.

I use a system that is only 1 molecule different than Lean, but it has the same impact as the difference between H2O and HO; one you drink to live and one you drink and die. I can't answer your question because I don't ever task my employees with improving manufacturing efficiency, but every single day manufacturing efficiency is gained as a by-product of our philosophy. So in a manner of speaking, yes, the shop gains efficiency just as information systems gain efficiency, just as every other system within our organization gains efficiency. It happens daily, hourly and organically without specific thought or mandated initiative.

We are driven simply by the idea of lead time reduction. How fast can we get this product out the door. Every day has deadlines, every hour has deadlines, every minute has deadlines. The thought would never occur to me or one of my employees, "hmm, that drawer slide cabinet looks a little sloppy, I think I'll work on organizing that today and see if perhaps it has some benefit".

This system is not necessarily TOC, however I do use TOC accounting principles and I love the singularity of purpose that TOC represents. There is a system that advocates lead time as a primary driver of all decision making and it is called QRM, however if I follow any of it's tenets it is merely by coincidence. The power is simply in the idea.

A good example would be my driver's Ed instructor back in high school. He had a technique he called "aim high". When a student would wander all over the road by constantly over correcting, he would say "aim high" meaning look way ahead. Like magic, the car would align itself and stop wandering. Something as simple as focusing on lead time reduction in every process of an organization will yield similar results.

There are dozens of examples within my organization of things we do that would likely be considered unconventional, but are a result of this philosophy. The way we bid, the way we draft, the way we engineer our product, the tools we own, the way they're arranged, the methods of construction, the way we finish, the way we deliver...

But whatever, none of this matters to anyone without credibility. Your posts on Lean, my posts, Prasad's posts....In order for any of it to have any meaning it would have to be accompanied by data. Data such as sales volumes and net profit margins. In the absence of that, any one person's opinion is meaningless.

DS
I agree with you on the 500k vs 1 million. Let me add the lesson I learned a while back the hardway. If your margins are low and your don't have a good system to get things out the door at $500k, things will only get worse when you double your volume. I also found that your problems don't double, they increase by the square or something thereabout, meaning if you had ten issues at a certain level you're likely to have 100 if you double that level.
As far as the Lean bs TOC, the first thing that would help is if we stop labeling it like its a brand. Lean for example is based on toyota production system but none of us are toyota so its not a perfect fit. Im working on The Closet Doctor production system and I have to take from Lean, TOC, and anything else I can and Improve. The most important thing is that we are actively engaged in CONTINOUS IMPROVEMENT.
Thanks for your input and feedback

DS's company is clearly focused on continuous improvement. The distinguishing characteristic for him is what he chooses to improve. In the past his constraint was likely sales so he has chosen to focus on this side of the organization.

I agree with you that it is not particularly helpful to focus too much on semantics. Toyota aspires to one piece flow only in a metaphorical sense. To borrow from DS's example, the goal of lean is to create a river of molecules, all flowing one molecule at a time.

An irony of lean is that freedom is found with rules. When you drive your car on the main thoroughfare you can, for the most part drive at the stated speed limit or slightly above. This is because there is agreement on what a red blinking light means. As you go out into the residential neighborhoods you need to crawl up to each and every intersection and look both ways else you will likely get T-boned. The irony here is that where you have the most amount of freedom you need to be more cautious and deliberative.

In any organization you will be constrained by capacity. The tools that are found in Lean Principles help you to free up resources to bear on problems TOC might elegantly identify.

DS says,
"But whatever, none of this matters to anyone without credibility. Your posts on Lean, my posts, Prasad's posts....In order for any of it to have any meaning it would have to be accompanied by data. Data such as sales volumes and net profit margins. In the absence of that, any one person's opinion is meaningless."

EXACTLY. I want to see the data to back up things. The reason Toyota and others can make such claim as you can see the figures, both in production and in profit. But translating Toyota to a 2-3, 4-6 man cabinet shop is tough even if you are interpreting what Toyota said correctly and that is a HUGE if.

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